Satellite Flight: The Journey To Mother Moon- Kid Cudi

Kid Cudi has been getting progressively more weird as his career has progressed. He has publicly stated that he had stopped smoking marijuana almost 4 years ago, be could have fooled me. This may be one of the most confusing statements he has released. I can see what he's going for here. This continues his Man on the Moon "story" of loneliness and isolation, with the central character's journey to the lonely confines of the moon (my best guess). I can only call it my best guess because the story line is hardly crucial to the album, and if I was told there was no story, I'd have a hard time arguing. The isolation is well illustrated with the relative lack of guests on this album (with the exception of Raphael Saadiq), which contrasts pretty heavily with Indicud. The production, done by Kid Cudi himself for the most part, is dark and atmospheric. This is the album's greatest strength and weakness, in my opinion. Because on this supposed rap album, there is almost nothing in the way of rap (or vocals for that matter), which forces the production to carry the whole weight of the songs.

With almost half the album consisting of instrumentals, most of them pretty repetitive, I was pretty confused. Kid Cudi hardly was a cookie cutter artist, but he did tend to rap on his own albums, albeit in his sing song flow. If you want to hear that, the songs most closely resembling his previous style, and therefore the most listenable, are 'Balmain Jeans', 'Internal Bleeding' and my personal favorite 'Too Bad I Have To Destroy You Now'. This almost seems like an ambient or post rock album to me. That's not to say that I dislike this style. 

Sigur Rós and Godspeed You! Black Emperor are masters of this dark, atmospheric style, so I know it can be done well. Hell, William Basinki's Disintegration Loops are short tape loops played for over an hour in some instances, and somehow that seemed a little less repetitive. That may seem a little harsh, but one of my requirements for a rapper on an album is to rap.

I can see what he was trying to do; create a dark and hypnotic soundscape to simulate the feeling of isolation, with his voice heard very sparingly. If this was done with some more interesting beats or over a shorter running time, I could definitely go for that. For what it is, it's pretty short run time seems exhausting. This album was supposed to be an EP, and I think this idea would have worked much better, especially with it essentially being a pit stop between major albums. I hope that Kid Cudi brings some more rapping to his next album; either that or start his new career as an electronica artist. Either way, I think this is just a small misstep, or a gateway for worse things to come. I know I made this one sound bad, but there are good things on this album which I think people should hear. Would I tell you to buy it? Probably not. Is it going to change music? I doubt it. But I think that this record does do some things right, and I think this is really a record people need to hear for themselves, because this is definitely going to divide listeners.

Out of a possible 5 stars, I give this:

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